SeaWorld, the zoo and the Coronado coastline are the obvious choices for visitors heading to San Diego, but for the been-there, done-that crowd, Gaslamp brothels, sword-fighting pirates and brew tastings may be more to their liking.

In a destination rich with mega attractions catering to sightseeing vacationers, enterprising entrepreneurs are hoping to stand out from the crowd by offering offbeat, quirky outings to tempt the jaded visitor and complement the requisite visits to theme parks and beaches.

Foodies with a yen for partying may be turned on by the Brothels, Bites and Booze offering in the Gaslamp Quarter, while beer connoisseurs who would prefer to not drink and drive may gravitate toward one of several brewery tours that have capitalized on San Diego’s growing reputation for quality craft beer.

“We’ve noticed a great deal of new startups trying to find a little niche market that hasn’t been tapped into before,” said Robert Marks, a concierge at the Omni Hotel downtown. “Unfortunately, some do not last. It really has to be something that has an interest and a market, and if you’re doing something really offbeat and specialized, that won’t necessarily survive in a very tough market.

“People are still trying to get the most out of their entertainment dollar.”

Newer tour operators acknowledge that between the startup costs and the recession-induced drop in tourism in recent years, turning a profit has been slow in coming. The operators of Brewery Tours of San Diego weren’t able to quit their day jobs until 2½ years after launching their business, while Pirate Ship Adventures, which melds a tour of the bay with swashbuckling high jinks, has yet to realize a return on its investment but hopes to do so next year.

“I would love for it to evolve into an iconic attraction that will provide entertainment for quite some time,” said Arrit McPherson, owner of the pirate tour. “We’re currently located at Cabrillo Isle Marina, where we’re virtually invisible. I’ve been working about a year to secure a location on the Embarcadero, but there’s very limited access there.”

While San Diego’s walking tours and water-based outings may seem like bit players compared to local industry heavyweights like SeaWorld and Legoland, they remain an important component of the whole tourist experience, said Joe Terzi, who heads the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau.

One of those tours — a Segway outing through Balboa Park — even made it into one of the bureau’s TV advertising spots.

As the economy has slowly rebounded, smaller tour operations have benefitted from increased tourism. San Diego’s tourist industry is starting to see more daily and overnight visitors, with more than 31 million people visiting the region last year, compared to 29.8 million in 2010.

“Once you get past the major drivers — the beaches, the culinary scene, the theme parks — people want to know what else is different,” Terzi said. “The craft brew market, for example, has really rocketed. For those who’ve been to San Diego five times and are now coming back for San Diego, they want to know, what else can I do in San Diego?”

As the start of summer approaches and with it, the annual invasion of tourists, here is a profile of four local tour operators.

Pirate Ship Adventures

A passion for pirates and years of experience in the business of water sports persuaded Arrit McPherson that an outing on the bay themed around a pirate adventure would resonate with both locals and tourists.

After flying around the country searching for the perfect vessel, McPherson found a salmon fishing boat in San Francisco that an outside team of contractors transformed into an 83-foot, three-mast galleon pirate ship, complete with a poop deck, forecastle and a dozen cannons that squirt 25-foot streams of water.

In all, he’s invested about $300,000 in the business, he said.

“I tend to do business ventures that are unusual,” said McPherson, who also operates the San Diego Adventure Center on Mission Bay, which offers a number of water sport activities. “Pirates of the Caribbean is an extremely popular attraction. I’ve had a fascination with pirates since a young age that doesn’t seem to go away.”

Among the offerings is a 1½-hour excursion billed as a search for lost treasure, fashioned as an interactive adventure led by comedic actors dressed in pirate costumes. The crew offers instruction in sword-fighting, commands the kids to swab the deck and leads a faux attack on Seaport Village, cannons firing air and water.

Docked near the Sheraton Harbor Island, the pirate-themed tours, cost $29.50 for adults and $24.50 for children. For more information, go to pirateshipadventures.com or call (619) 224-4386.

So Diego Tours

A native San Diegan who admits to a fondness for partying in the Gaslamp, Bianca Jaime fashioned a business that combined her love of food and night life with her passion for San Diego. What originated as the Restaurant Hop dinner tour ultimately evolved into Brothels, Bites and Booze in the Gaslamp, and Tequila, Tacos and Tombstones in Old Town.

“Because I was always out at happy hours, partying and at networking events, I was literally a concierge for all my friends who were asking me where all the hot spots were,” recalled Jaime, 27. “I thought, ‘I should be getting paid for this.’ ”

After investing $15,000 in startup costs, including developing a website, Jaime debuted her downtown tour in September 2010. The Old Town tour followed a year later, and Jaime’s So Diego Tours recently introduced a weekly wine stroll in the Gaslamp. The two tours, which cover four to five restaurants, cost $45 each.

Brothels, Bites and Booze, which covers about eight blocks in the historic downtown district, lasts 2½ hours and stops at five restaurants that offer one to three bites of food at each, plus a small sip of a specialty cocktail or a local brew.

Jaime, who has invested about $30,000 so far with the help of her parents, employs five tour guides, plus two part-timers who work in her office.

“I don’t go out as much at night as I used to, but I can’t stop having fun,” she said. “I’ll go out now about twice a month to the clubs, but I used to go three nights a week.”

Another Side of San Diego

Vans, buses, bikes and good old-fashioned shoe leather are fine ways to see the sights, but Kenneth Lippman figured there was an even better mode of transportation for the active set: the Segway.

After getting laid off from his job as a loan officer five years ago, Lippman decided to head in a completely different direction and open a business that capitalized on his fondness for all things San Diego.

“I went to a meeting of the Professional Tour Guide Association, and most were semiretired, so I thought there was a missing demographic of hip young people who want to be in this business,” said Lippman, who has expanded his business to Los Angeles.

Another Side of San Diego offers Segway outings through Balboa Park, the Gaslamp and Coronado, which also make stops along the Embarcadero. The two- to three-hour tours, which range in cost from $59 to $149, typically cover about 10 miles, said Lippman, whose company offers about 10 to 15 Segway tours daily during the summer, with about four to eight participants per tour.

“I started with four Segways and a dream operating out of my home office,” said Lippman. “We now occupy over 6,000 square feet of office space and we have 40 Segways.”

Lippman, who originally spent $200,000 to launch the business, says he has made back his initial investment but has since invested millions more. He also operates a number of sightseeing and wine tours.

Brewery Tours of San Diego

Long before San Diego started attracting national attention for its craft beer scene, John McDermott conceived of the idea of conducting escorted tours for beer aficionados. Then an employee at Ballast Point, McDermott and partner Mindy Eastman invested in a 20-passenger bus five years ago and started taking people to select breweries where the customers would get tours and tastings.

While interest in the five-hour tours was slow to build, they have since grown in popularity. McDermott said the firm, Brewery Tours of San Diego, now has three buses and a van in San Diego and a bus and a van in San Francisco, where they expanded a year and a half ago.

“When I was working in a brewery, people were always coming in from out of state to the tasting room but didn’t have a good way to get anywhere after that,” McDermott said. “We continued to work our jobs as we started the company. We now have all kinds of packages: public tours with set routes that we run seven days a week and other tours where a group signs up and they pick where they want to go. We work with every brewery in the county, about 30 of them.”

As news about San Diego’s breweries has spread throughout the country, the brewery tours have grown in popularity, noted McDermott. They range in price from $65 to $89.